Succulents and More™

I have plenty more posts from Santa Barbara in the pipeline, but I want to take a quick break to show you some recent developments in our own garden. Remember my big Aloe ‘Moonglow’ falling over about three weeks ago? I made a clean cut to the trunk and replanted it a bit closer to the fence. Here it is today, not missing a beat: Replanted Aloe ‘Moonglow’ this close to flowering That was ‘Moonglow’ #1. This is what greeted me when I got back from Santa Barbara last week: Aloe ‘Moonglow’ #2 face-planted on the sidewalk Aloe ‘Moonglow’ #2 had fallen over, too! That pesky thing called gravity at work again! Amazing how in just a day or two in this horizontal position the flower heads had already started to change orientation! I made a clean cut and reset the ‘Moonglow’ a bit closer to the fence, just like the other one. Aloe ‘Moonglow’ #2 after resetting As of today, the flower heads are still in the wrong orientation, but I imagine they’ll right themselves in due course. Aloe ‘M...

This is a continuation of my previous post featuring random pictures from around Santa Barbara. To see other posts from my recent trip, click here . Aloes As I mentioned earlier , Agave attenuata , the foxtail agave, was the most common landscape succulent we saw in Santa Barbara. But there were plenty of aloes as well. The ones that were in flower were immediately noticeable. We spotted many Aloe arborescens , but for some reason neither Kyle nor I took a single photo (they’re pretty boring). I did take photos of Aloe ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ , lots of them. Last year, Randy Baldwin of San Marcos Growers told me about a mass planting of ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ in a local business park. I featured it in this January 2025 post , together with a spectacular display of Aloe ‘Birds and Bees’ in another commercial landscape nearby. I wanted Kyle to see both of these plantings so we stopped there after we left San Marcos Growers on Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, the ‘Birds and Bees’ were past their prim...